Bodybuilder Bakes Heavyweight Protein Cakes

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

What's up, friends, listeners, community? It is New Year's Eve. Thank you all for joining me for all a part of this year, 2019. If you're listening later, well, this is the last day of 2019. And I hope it has been a good year for you. I hope it was a good year for you.

And just in case it wasn't, well, January 1, it all starts over. It's not just a year, in fact. This time it is a decade. Which is like daylight savings time, except instead of moving our clocks forward or back an hour, we're changing decades. Wow. Intense.

Now, on the topic of New Year's resolutions, listen, I know it's kind of invoked to write a blog post about how you think New Year's resolutions are overrated. And you're just going to fail if you resolve to do something. And here's a better way forward, et cetera. Well, I believe there's nothing wrong with a good resolution. If it doesn't work out, OK. But what if it did?

So tomorrow I resolve to get on a plane and fly to London. That's my New Year's resolution. I should be able to see it through since it's happening really soon. I haven't got past that part yet, but presumably there will be more because I've got a bunch of stuff I want to do in 2020. And I look forward to sharing it with you.

All right. So speaking of sharing in today's story, an anesthetist who's also a mom of three and a competitive bodybuilder has her protein cake and eats it too. She loved her workout routine, but the diet not so much. After learning to make a healthy protein dense cake, she clears the bar to self-made success. This project is doing really, really well, but there's also been some lessons along the way, which ultimately is what it's all about.

So bodybuilder bakes heavyweight protein cakes. That story is coming right up. Christine Moore had just given birth to her third child in just over three years. She was tired. And in her words, felt frumpy and lumpy.

She wanted to take back control of her body and get ready for a bikini shoot. So she took up an aggressive routine, bodybuilding with a strict low sugar diet. It wasn't a small move, but Christine was disciplined and determined. Month after month, her body gained strength and endurance, but her mind started to wear down. Depriving her sweet tooth was good for her toning figure, just not for her mental health.

She would inevitably crave sweets to the point where she would chow down on a couple of donuts, then feel bad about it, and then work out extra hard to make up the difference. It wasn't a sustainable pattern. If she was going to be able to keep up her new lifestyle, she had to find a way to satisfy her desires without overindulging. Christine ordered some whey protein powder and a few other healthy ingredients. Black seeds, cashew milk, applesauce, and stevia.

And started thinking up ways to make something sweet and nutritious. Out of one part curiosity and one part desperation, she blended up the ingredients, threw them in the microwave for a couple of minutes, and then took out the bowl. Lo and behold, to her surprise, she had made a cake. A cake with 26 grams of protein, only 2 grams of sugar, and 16 grams of carbs. This was a healthy, delicious cake.

In fact, since she was only using whole healthy ingredients, her cake had nearly the same nutritional value as her daily chicken, rice, and asparagus meal. She couldn't believe it. Christine could literally have her cake and eat it too, every single day. She experimented with more recipes and posted recipes of her creations online to much enthusiasm from friends and followers. She hadn't really thought of her cakes as a business opportunity.

She already had a full-time job, but the thought of making money on the side was captivating. And so Christine began baking cakes for friends and hand-delivering them for $5 each. It worked until one day when she had a ton of orders and stayed up until midnight and realized that selling complete cakes wasn't something that would scale. She needed a different approach. Sell the mix and not the full cake.

The mix would be shelf-stable. She could produce it in large batches, and it would allow her to grow the business instead of baking all day. She got together with a graphic designer friend to help with branding, bought some blank food pouches and stick-on labels, and ordered a ton of ingredients, nearly $5,000 worth. And within a few weeks, Lil Buff Bakery came to life and did its first push-ups. Lil Buff, that's the name.

A local bodybuilding competition allowed Christine to sell at the event. So she spent a few days packaging 300 bags of mix and baked a bunch of cakes the day before. She sampled her product at the competition and, to her surprise, sold out of all 300 servings at $5 each, for a total of $1,500. These protein-heavy, gluten-free, and guilt-free cakes were clearly in demand. Christine didn't have time to ease into it.

She went straight for the heavyweights. She called a friend for more help setting up an e-commerce store. She signed a contract with a local warehouse. And within a month, Lil Buff had earned $5,000 in sales between the expo and online. But the next month, it almost all came crashing down, just like a crossfitter with the keto flu.

Christine had ordered a huge batch of packaging with the name Lil Buff Bakery on it when she got an ominous letter. A major consumer brand, one that Christine cannot legally identify, was claiming that she was infringing on their trademark with her brand name. It was heartbreaking. She almost left it all behind, right then and there. Despite the shock and frustration, Christine decided to fight it out.

She was a bodybuilder, after all. It took a couple of months, some high levels of stress and anxiety. But with the help of an attorney, she was able to adjust the name to Lil Buff Protein, nullify the giant corporation's claims, and avoid the impending lawsuit. Perhaps their threats were only half-baked. Growth continued over the next few months.

Every Lil Buff cake came with a packet of sprinkles so that customers could have some fun and get creative. And this boosted social sharing dramatically. In October 2016, Lil Buff soared past $10,000 in sales. It was also the month she launched her first product variation, a pumpkin spice flavored mix. And the organic social shares just kept piling on.

The following January, Lil Buff generated over $30,000 and sales continued to rise from the oven. In fact, the numbers have doubled year after year for the past three. For the most part, her marketing has mainly been about stoking the fire of her most loyal fans. She does that with recipe content, 15 new and seasonal flavors, and some add-on products like microwavable containers. Awesome as that was, for Christine it wasn't enough because there were still thousands and thousands of healthy eaters out there who can't enjoy Lil Buff cakes.

That's why she just released a set of vegan mixes. And there are more specialized diet options coming soon. It hasn't been a cakewalk, but like a good gluten-free protein-dense treat, she has risen to the occasion. [Music]

Are you pro-resolution or anti-resolution? What about goals?

Where do you stand on all that stuff? Let's make 2020 a year to remember, regardless of your stance. Look, we're all going into a new year. So whatever you want to call it, let's do something significant, meaningful and fun. And while we're at it, let's have some cake, bodybuilder friendly or otherwise.

I was taking a peek at Christine's Instagram, which is really fun. She's also super honest and transparent with her customers, which I think is just such an underrated, attractive quality. She recently had a problem with her app, and the thank you note that she usually sends with each order wasn't working properly, essentially. So she's written this whole detailed explanation and apology for it. A person who writes a long apology for not being able to send you the personalized thank you with the order that you paid for.

That seems like a trustworthy person in business to me. So check it out. We will link it up, of course. Today's end of year show notes are at sidelskool.com/1095. That is episode 1095.

Thank you so much listeners, and thank you 2019. I'll see you again in a new decade. Dun dun dun. [Music]

From the Onward Project.